Finally we could order the roof plates. And yes, this was 90% of our budget. It seemed to make sense putting the money in the most important part. Now here in the middle of Portugal the temperature goes from 45 (or even more) degrees Celsius down to almost zero at a cold winter night (we never had frost up until now). So a good isolating roof is one of the first priorities. It wasn’t that difficult to put the “half plates” up. With a little bit of help from my wife it just took a few hours.

The advantage by using these steel roof plates is that they come with a red (or other color) coat on the outside and a white coat on the inside. Painting ceilings is never been my biggest hobby.The building itself decided what shape of roof it wanted to have, it’s just adapting the new construction to the old.

Now the first part of the roof was on, the amount of work and stones it would take to fill the gab in the back wall, became clear….

At least the street side of the project looked like a real building again.

Because of the many sun hours it’s important to seal the wood as good as possible. After three coats of bitumen paint it started to look good, although I realized that I had to repeat this process every year.Now, this build is not done according to existing procedures, it’s a constant negotiation between the old ruin and my own wishes. An unknown road towards a future workshop. That’s why I decided to put some words on the side.

with this self supporting plates I only need a support every 3 meters…. I did it 2 meters apart… When you live in an area where it snows…. it’s a totally different story. Than the roof needs to be much steeper to. Luckily…it doesn’t snow in our region of the country…. (up until now that is)